Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-2005
Journal Title
Wisconsin Law Review
ISSN
0043-650X
Abstract
Mitchell's study exemplifies the New Legal Realist goal of combining qualitative and quantitative empirical research to shed light on important legal and policy issues. He also demonstrates the utility of a ground-level contextual analysis that examines legal problems from the bottom up. The study tracks processes by which black rural landowners have gradually been dispossessed of more than 90% of the land held by their predecessors in 1910. Mitchell points out that despite the continuing practices that contribute to this problem, there has been very little research on the issue, and what little attention legal scholars have paid to it has proceeded in an empirical vacuum. The article proceeds to examine existing data, and to describe the ongoing empirical research being conducted on black rural land loss in the U.S. south by Mitchell and his team. Mitchell concludes that a thoroughly contextual analysis (combining qualitative with quantitative methods) is necessary if we are to achieve an accurate understanding of the process by which law contributes to black rural land loss in this country. This kind of understanding will permit more effective policy decisions, both within and outside of the law.
First Page
557
Last Page
615
Num Pages
59
Volume Number
2005
Issue Number
2
Publisher
University of Wisconsin Law School
Recommended Citation
Thomas W. Mitchell,
Destabilizing the Normalization of Rural Black Land Loss: A Critical Role for Legal Empiricism,
2005
Wis. L. Rev.
557
(2005).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/784
File Type
Included in
Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Race Commons, Property Law and Real Estate Commons